Jacques Cousteau The Marine Explorer, Called The Ocean Of Cortéz, Additionally Known As The Gulf Of California.

The vaquita marina is determined best in Mexico. It is the maximum critically endangered sea mammal in the world, its survival threatened by means of a lethal conflict of hobbies among fishing and conservation. Scientists estimate there may be less than a dozen left in the wild.

Considered one of its treasures is a silvery-colored porpoise with huge, panda eyes. But the vaquita's days can be numbered due to unlawful fishing for any other covered species: totoaba. Totoaba, a fish that can grow as big as a vaquita, was a food source before it changed into located on Mexico's endangered list.

"They used to trap it inside the 60s and 70s," learns ramón franco díaz, president of a casting federation in the coastal town of San Felipe, at the peninsula from Baja California. "then the Chinese issued with their suitcases full about dollars, and acquired our consciences."

They arrived looking at the totoaba's swim bladder, an organ that facilitates the fish to live buoyantly. In China, it's far distinctly prized for its perceived - though unproven - medicinal residences.

In keeping with the earth league worldwide ngo, 10-12 months-old dried swim bladders can sell to $85,000 (£60,000) a kilo under china. The fishermen of san Felipe make best a tiny fraction however in a negative community, commercial enterprise has boomed for the "cocaine of the ocean".

"the illegal fishermen - the crook elements - are so sturdy that in the apparent mild of day you see them including their illegal nets and totoaba," says Mr franco díaz.

Each afternoon at some point of the season, a stream of pick-up vehicles towing fishing boats reverses down the concrete slipway of the city's public beach and into the sea. Those crafts are generally unlicensed, and their group uses nets that can kill that vaquita.

"gillnets might be hundreds of meters high and 10 meters high," says Valeria cities, who works with a Mexican NGO, Museo de Los Angeles Ballena. "they turn out to be a wall underneath the water."